


The Parting Glass

by portraitofemmy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes-centric, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Folk Music, Irish Steve Rogers, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Recovery, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Wakanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 00:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7954330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portraitofemmy/pseuds/portraitofemmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When he remembers the song, he remembers it in Sarah’s voice, not in his own or that of his own mother. Just like every other memory that Bucky Barnes had considered important enough to go over again and again often enough to write it into the depths of his mind, it was tinged with echoes of Steve Rogers. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Parting Glass

**Author's Note:**

> The Parting Glass is an Irish folk song. Like all folk songs, there's minor variations in words an melody you can find depending on the version. However, Ed Sheeran did a recording that's pretty good:  
> [The Parting Glass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kVVn80pFOc)

_But since it fell unto my lot_  
_that I should rise and you should not_  
_I'll gently rise and I'll softly call_  
_goodnight and joy be to you all_  
–– The Parting Glass, Irish Folk Song 

 

When he remembers the song, he remembers it in Sarah’s voice.

–––

“Lord have mercy, James Barnes, it’s almost 10 o’clock. What’er you doing out at this time of night?” Mrs. Rogers greets him at the door, her voice a soft lilt that’s quiet despite the disapproving glare she levels at him. Bucky flushes, scuffing his shoe against the porch.

“They’re fighting again,” he tells his shoe, and Mrs. Rogers is quiet for a moment before she sighs and beckons him. 

“Steve’s asleep,” she tells him, walking over to the stove where there’s always a kettle of water ready to boil. Bucky hovers at the edge of the table, glancing towards the door to his best friend’s bedroom. Steve’d been sick all week, and it was past time for good boys to be in bed anyway, so of course Steve was asleep. 

“Sorry, Ma’am,” he ends up telling the floorboards, and Mrs. Rogers clucks at the apology, says something in Gaelic that Bucky doesn’t know but understands as the shape of asking for patience or guidance. 

“Well c’mere,” she says, briskly, and Bucky goes, leaning into her side, catching his hands in the fold of her skirt while she sets about making strong tea for herself, and a small cup weakened almost white with milk for him. “What were they fighting about, Jamie boy?” she asks gently, and Bucky swallows.

“Becky’s hair’s still red,” Bucky says, and doesn’t quite understand why this is such a bad thing, but it must be to have his Da shouting like that. “Da says it should be turning brown by now, and it’s not. That mine and Cathy’s had when we were her age.”

Mrs Rogers sighs, dropping her hand to ruffle through his own dark brown mop. “Rebecca’s as black Irish as the rest of your brood, but if your Da’s looking for something to pick fights about, that’s sure to get him one.”

“I don’t understand,” Bucky admits, and Mrs. Rogers chuckles softly. 

“Good,” she says, which makes Bucky scowl, because he hates not knowing things, hates being kept in the dark. “You will some day, and hopefully you’ll grow up to be a better man than George Barnes would ever know how to raise.”

She moves towards the sagging couch, her tea in one hand and Bucky’s in another, and Bucky follows her. “Steve picks fights all the time,” he points out, which makes Mrs. Rogers laugh.

“He does do that,” she agrees and nods towards the spot next to her, where Bucky can scramble up. “But not for the sake of the fight. Yet, anyway. He’s always fighting for something.”

“That matters?” Bucky asks, and Mrs. Rogers nods.

“Fighting just to hurt someone is cruel,” she says gently, and Bucky snuggles into her side. She sighs, starts combing her fingers through his hair again. “Steve’ll be excited you’re here in the morning.”

“Will he be cross we didn’t wake him?” Bucky worries, and Mrs. Rogers laughs again, soft and lilting. 

“If he is, it’ll be with me, darling, not you.”

They lapse into silence, and Bucky sips his sweet, milky tea, already imagining the games they might play the next day. Those thoughts slip away into the quiet, and he’s left with a sleepy contentment, can’t remember the last time his own mother held him like his. Before Cathy was born, probably. It takes him a moment to notice that she’s started singing softly, words he doesn’t understand, but that sound familiar. _“As airgead go léir a ere a bhí agam, chaith mé é i gcuideachta maith–”_

“I know that song,” Bucky interrupts, and then scrunches up his face, thinking. “I think my Ma sung it in English though.”

“Probably,” Mrs. Rogers agrees, and there’s some bittersweet edge to her voice that Bucky doesn’t understand. Tonight is too full of things he doesn’t understand. But she switches to English instead, anyway. _“And all the harm that e'er I've done, alas, it was to none but me. And all I've done for want of wit, to memory now I can't recall. So fill to me the parting glass, goodnight and joy be with you all.”_

She manages to slip the cup from his hand before he falls asleep.

___

“C’mon Ma, surely you were young once, what kind of music did you listen too?” 

“Steven Grant!” Sarah scolds, scandalized, and Bucky laughs, delighted, where he’s sprawled out on the floor in front of the radio. 

“C’mon, Stevie, you can’t tell a lady she’s not young!” Bucky teases, foot bopping along to the swing music pouring out of the speaker, feeling the beat of it down into his skin, into his muscles, into the core of himself.

“I did a better job of raising him than I did you,” Sarah grouses, glaring at her son and snapping the dish towel in her hands towards him. Steve dances out of reach, laughing, and Bucky grins, watching as Steve tries not to trip over his own feet as he makes his get-away. 

Thirteen years old, and manhood is coming slower for Steve than it is for Bucky, but what he has got is feet too big to know that to do with, which makes him fall all over himself all the time. Bucky thinks it’s a riot, but Steve gets prickly and hurt if Bucky needles him for it, and it’s no fun if Steve’s not sniping back. 

“I’ll have you know that Jazz music existed before Benny Goodman,” Sarah informs them loftily, and Bucky would be worried they’d actually upset her, but from this angle he can see the way she’s fighting down a smile. 

“Nah, Ma, I have it on good authority that Jazz music began in 1929.”

“Uh huh, and is Good Authority laying on our living room floor?” Sarah asks dryly, and Bucky laughs again, springing to his feet. 

“C’mere, Stevie, I wanna show you this dance my cousin taught me,” Bucky says excitedly, grabbing for Steve. “It’s called the Lindy Hop, it’s real fun, everyone’s gonna be doing it soon.”

Steve makes a face, but lets Bucky tug him into the clear space in the living room and walk him through the steps. It seems simple enough when Bucky does it, but Steve gets twisted up when he tries. Bucky tugs him around, so they’re facing each other. “Here, I’ll lead first, and then we can switch so you’ll know how to do it with a dame. Er. Girl?” he corrects, giving Sarah a nervous look, and she just shakes her head longsufferingly at him. 

“Girls aren’t gonna want to dance with me,” Steve protests, and Bucky scoffs. 

“Course they will, pal, you’re swell,” Bucky says distractedly, and grabs Steve’s hands. “Now c’mon, follow me.” And if Bucky’s too busy watching their feet to notice the particular look on Steve’s face, watching him, Sarah isn’t. She keeps her worries to herself, reminds herself she loves both her boys no matter what, and watches them make a full circuit of the living room before Steve trips and nearly sends them both crashing into the radio.

“Alright boys, I think that’s enough swing for today. You’re going to go right through the floor down onto old Mr. Flanagan.” 

“He’d deserve it, the creep,” Bucky says darkly. “He keeps trying to get my cousin Alice to go round his place alone, and she’s 16.”

“Well, be that as it may, I don’t want to have to step over a hole in the floor to get to the window.” 

Bucky sighs, letting go of Steve’s hands to move to click off the radio. “See, knew you were too old to appreciate Jazz,” Steve protests dramatically, and Sarah shoots him a glare.

“Keep working your way towards no supper, mister.”

It’s an idle threat and Bucky knows it. They both work too hard to make sure that Steve can have three square meals a day to take one away from him, but it makes him pout none the less. Bucky swings his arm around Steve’s shoulders, shaking him a little until he laughs and leans into Bucky’s side. His weight is warm and comfortable against Bucky, feels right there, like dancing with him had felt right.

“Well, when I was a girl, we didn’t have a radio.”

“In Ireland?” Steve asks, and he’s perked up the way he always does whenever Sarah talks about the country she left behind. She does it so rarely, Bucky thinks they must be memories full of sadness for her. Her parents were still there, he knows, when they sent her off to Steve’s Da’s family in America, to the promise of a better life. 

“Yes, in Ireland,” Sarah agrees and puts down the plate she’s drying to stare into the middle distance. “We used to sing to each other though. My Da, he had an amazing voice. Never heard someone who could sing like him, he loved it so.” 

“You didn’t inherit that,” Bucky informs Steve, teasing, sticking Steve with his elbow. “You’ve got the kind of singing voice God gave concussed baby sheep.” 

“Get stuffed, choir boy,” Steve shoots back, and his elbows are sharper than Bucky’s, which means it really isn’t a fair fight at all. 

“You do have a lovely voice,” Sarah says to Bucky, smiling gently, then gives him a conspiratorial wink. “Girls love a boy who can sing.”

“Sing us something, Ma?” Steve asks, sliding into a kitchen chair, and Bucky falls into one next to him, their knees knocking together.

“Oh, what should I sing?”

“The Parting Glass,” Bucky says abruptly, chasing a memory of contentment and happiness. “I think I know that one, I can do the harmony.” 

“Such a sad song, for a happy day,” Sarah admonishes, and Bucky grins at her.

“You know a _cheerful_ Irish folk song?” he points out, and she sighs, shaking her head at him, but starts singing none the less. After a few lines, Bucky joins in, filling out the lower harmony under Sarah’s bright, clear soprano. 

_“Oh all the comrades that e'er I've had, are sorry for my going away. And all the sweethearts that e'er I've had, would wish me one more day to stay.”_

Steve rests his chin on his hand, smiling softly, eyes flicking between Bucky and his Ma, until they settle on Bucky. He looks... something in the way he’s looking at Bucky makes him flush, proud and self-conscious, with a squirm of excitement in his stomach that he can’t identify. It makes concentrating on the song hard to do, but if he misses a couple notes, Sarah doesn’t say anything. 

____

Bucky sings the song at her funeral.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever want to sing it again, for the rest of his life.

____

There’s a crook to Steve’s spine, that you can’t really see when he’s dressed and standing upright. You can’t really see it at all, unless he happens to be laying down shirtless next to you, or underneath you, and Bucky’s glad to say he’s pretty much the only one who ever gets to see Steve like that. 

He leans down to kiss the knob of Steve’s spine, right at the point it starts to curve, and Steve makes a vague sound of acknowledgement, but doesn’t move otherwise. Bucky smiles, presses it into Steve’s skin, drags his nose up Steve’s spine to kiss the base of his neck, nuzzle the fine blonde hairs on his neck. 

It’s early summer, and it’s warm enough that being naked is comfortable and relaxing without making skin on skin contact seem like a special kind of torture, and Bucky wants to get as much of Steve’s skin as he can before touch becomes unbarable. 

“What’re you thinking about?” Bucky asks, breaths into Steve’s hair, and Steve sighs.

“A million things.”

“Course you are, big brain like yours,” Bucky agrees, sliding his arms around Steve’s skinny chest so he can blanket Steve’s body with his own, envelop him. It leaves Bucky’s soft dick tucked into the crack of Steve’s ass, and at some point he might get interested enough to do something about that, but for now he just tucks his nose behind Steve’s ear and breathes in his scent. 

“You sayin’ I got a big head?” Steve grouses, and it’s teasing, makes Bucky smile into his skin again.

“Biggest melon in Brooklyn,” Bucky agrees, and Steve grunts in acknowledgement, which makes Bucky laugh. 

“Shush you, you’re gonna wake the neighbors.”

“Can’t have that,” Bucky agrees, because yeah, actually, the last thing he wants to deal with is having to peel himself away from Steve and finding enough clothes to be presentable because Mrs. Rigoletti is banging on their door again. “It’s Saturday morning and I don’t have to work. I don’t want to leave this bed until at least noon.”

“Good luck with that, all the whiskey you drank last night,” Steve mutters, and Bucky pinches him. 

“I had two, whaddaya even sayin’? And I’m pretty sure what I didn’t dance off, I worked off when we got home.” 

Steve snorts, wiggling his ass back against Bucky pointedly. “I remember.” Bucky bites at his shoulder lightly, and Steve sighs, settling again. “It was fun,” he admits, and Bucky grins, triumphant.

“See, told you,” he waits a couple beats, and then says, “only way you’da had more fun is if the police _had_ turned up and you’d gotten to punch someone while resisting arrest.”

“Don’t even start with me, Barnes,” Steve warns, and Bucky grins, nosing at his neck. “Was nice to be able to dance with you, is all I’m saying.”

“Yeah, it was,” Bucky agrees, and feels cocooned in this little bubble of happiness that followed them home from the bar near the docks, where no one had looked at them twice, because there was nothing special to see. 

“Maybe we can go again before you ship off to basic.”

The happiness congeals and turns to lead in Bucky’s stomach, hot and hard and sickeningly uncomfortable. He sighs, and rolls off of Steve to lay on his back beside him. “So that’s what you’re thinking about.”

Steve squirms over until he’s tucked into Bucky’s side, lying half on his chest, chin propped up on his fist on Bucky’s pec. Absently, helplessly, Bucky brings his hand up to thread through Steve’s soft blonde hair. “Can’t really not think about it,” Steve admits, and the argument they’ve been having since Bucky got his draft notice hangs in the air around them. _I want to go with you, I should be out there too_ , a million different variations. They’ve said them all. 

“I love you,” Bucky says honestly, because that’s all there is left to say. 

Steve sighs and turns a little to lay his head on Bucky’s chest, so his good ear is resting over Bucky’s heart. “You know I love you too.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, and he does. He just also knows how pride mixes with fear in Steve’s head, and how it comes out in vicious, angry tangles. “I probably won’t mind a couple letters reminding me though.”

“Don’t think I can put that in a letter,” Steve says, amused, and Bucky smiles, heartsore. 

“Sure you can, just tell me I’m a stupid jerk with an ugly mug. I’ll know what you mean.” Steve laughs, but it’s hollow sounding, and Bucky’s stomach turns over. _I don’t want to leave you either, Stevie, you’ve gotta know that. I’d ask you to run away in a heartbeat if I didn’t know you’d hate me for it. You’re a better man than I am._

“Hey, Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you sing the song?”

Bucky swallows, and his mouth feels suddenly dry. “What you want that for, huh? Ain’t this sad enough?”

“I like your voice,” Steve says quietly, and since when has Bucky ever been able to deny Steve anything?

He clears his throat, and tries not think of Sarah, and sings _“Of all the money that e'er I had, I spent it in good company...”_

By the end of the song, he can feel Steve’s tears falling onto his chest, but says nothing. Instead he just combs his fingers through Steve’s soft blond hair, and starts the verses over.

–––

Europe is cold, and wet, and it smells like shit. 

Well, the bits of it that Bucky’s been through are and do, anyway. There’s bits of it that are maybe alright, if all those books he and Steve read growing up are to be believed. But then again, Michelangelo didn’t paint a chapel in a fucking trench while getting shelled either. 

Steve’s sitting next to him, big as an ox and impossible, but he’s got that look on his face that all guys get the first time they’re stuck in a trench during an air raid. He’s seen Steve close to death enough times to count on two hands, but Bucky could have gone his whole life without knowing what he looks like truly, deeply scared. 

_You idiot, this is why I wanted you to stay home,_ half of Bucky thinks, while the other half can’t help but be aware of the others around them, looking to their Captain and their Sergeant to assuage their own fear. 

Steve’s staring off into the middle distance, and his thumb and forefinger are rubbing together like he’s counting an invisible rosary. Steve’d stopped going to church about half a year after Sarah died, and started to have some pretty strong things to say about organized religion around the time he decided he’d rather wake up in Bucky’s bed every morning than his own. But the way the bombs felt like they shook the entire earth when they landed... Bucky can’t blame him. He can blame God just fine, if there’s anyone up there to tell to fuck off he’s going too, but he can’t blame Steve for falling back on old habits.

Fuck, he wishes he could have died before he had to see Steve this scared. 

“Hey,” Bucky says at the same time he reaches forward to lay his hand on Steve’s, to stop the rubbing of his thumb and forefinger. “No point in being quiet, we can’t make enough noise to be heard over the engines and explosions anyway.”

“Feels wrong to talk,” Steve says stiffly, then his entire body freezes up as another shell lands, shaking the ground so hard Bucky’s feels it in his chest. 

One of the privates they borrowed from the 107th for this mission has started talking to himself, a couple feet away, eyes glazed over and nervous chatter, and it’s shooting off warning bells in Bucky’s head. He’s seen shock hit this fast in new blood before, and if the kid keeps slipping he’s gonna do something stupid, like hop out of the trench and try to run or accidentally set off a grenade inside it. Bucky’s his sergeant. Bucky should go make the kid calm down. 

But Steve’s body is trembling minutely next to him, like he can conquer shock by sheer force of will, and Bucky knows deep down in his soul that nothing could drag him away from Steve’s side right now. Luckily, Monty’s already moving toward the kid, giving Bucky a sharp nod as he passes. “Lovely weather,” he says sarcastically, and Bucky draws up a smile.

“Hear it’s like this in London all the time these days,” Bucky says, and Steve makes a strangled sound next to him that might have been trying to be a laugh. 

Bucky lets his head fall back against the wall of the trench, and reflects that there was a time where he’d have cared about getting dirt in his hair. Now he just tries to force his body to relax everywhere but where he’s gripping Steve’s hand. 

“Maybe next time we’ve got leave, we can go to Ireland,” Bucky says absently, and that at least gets Steve to look at him, surprised. “What? We’re based in London, that’s a hell of a lot closer than Brooklyn.” 

“You think we’re gonna get leave that lasts longer than 24 hours?” Steve asks, and it’s a mild attempt at sarcasm, which is utterly ruined by the fact that Bucky knows Steve well enough to know that he won’t _take_ leave that’s longer than 24 hours. Not while Hydra’s on the move. 

“Yeah, pal, shuddup,” Bucky dismisses him, and then squeezes his hand. “Imagine it though. We could take a train up, and then a ferry, and then we’re back where our parents came from. You’ve probably still got aunts and uncles in County Kildare we could find.” 

“What about you?” Steve asks, rolling his head to look at Bucky, barely containing a wince as another blast falls. “I don’t remember, was there anyone left in County Kerry?”

“Nah,” Bucky says with a shrug. “Everyone but my Nan came over, and she’s long gone. There’s probably some distant cousins, but-” he gives a shrug. Talking about this is making him think of Rebecca and Cathy and Maggie back home, and he misses his sisters with a sharp tug. “Cathy’s probably had her baby by now.”

“Can’t believe it,” Steve says with a shake of his head. “I remember her screaming bloody murder because you wouldn’t take her to buy ribbons for her hair, and now she’s got a baby.” 

Another shell lands, close enough that Bucky’s ears are left ringing so bad he can’t hear anything else for a good 30 seconds, teeth rattling in his skull, and next to him Steve’s gone white as a sheet. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says, so quiet that if Bucky weren’t practically on top of him, he wouldn’t be able to hear it in all the racket. “I’m glad you’re here, Buck, if–” 

“First rule of trenches, Rogers, we don’t talk like that,” Bucky says sharply, giving his hand a hard squeeze. Steve looks at him, and Bucky wants to kiss him. He wants to kiss Steve Rogers again before he dies. 

Drawing in a deep breath, Bucky makes himself start to relax again. “Any of you fellas know The Parting Glass?”

“That a drinking song?” Dum Dum asks, and Steve laughs. 

“No, it’s– It’s an Irish folk song. My mother used to sing it to us.”

“Come on, I’ll teach ya,” Bucky says, which earns him a simpering round of coos about his angelic singing voice, but he can’t even be bothered to toss the shit back, because Steve’s smiling, just a little. “So the first verse goes like this...”

___

Deep in the ice of the arctic circle, Steve dreams of Bucky’s voice.  
___

In the ice of a cryochamber in Siberia, The Soldier dreams of nothing at all.

___

When he remembers the song, he remembers it in Sarah’s voice.

It comes back before some other things do, in that weird kind of trick memory can play sometimes. The Soldier – James Buchanan Barnes – Bucky has read about memory, because he reads about everything, it’s the best way to fill in the gaps in his head, both from memories missing and from time simply missed. There’s a lot of new things to learn that Bucky hadn’t known when he’d fallen off the train in the Alps. 

But he’s read about memory, and he understands how something like a folk song that’s strung its way through his whole life might be carved in deeper than other things, might come back sooner. 

So when he remembers the song, he remembers it in Sarah’s voice, not in his own or that of his own mother. Just like every other memory that Bucky Barnes had considered important enough to go over again and again often enough to write it into the depths of his mind, it was tinged with echoes of Steve Rogers.

But the song is there, wormed into his brain, and in the quiet of the little apartment in Bucharest it plays on a loop inside his mind. He doesn’t feel confident enough in his voice– in himself and his identity as a man who used to love music once, a lifetime ago– to sing, to let the song escape. But it loops through his head, a haunting melody sung by a woman almost a century dead now, as he walks through an open air market, reads in a library, sits in the quiet of his apartment and listens to traffic pass by. He can’t bring himself to sing along.

Sometimes he catches himself humming it, though.

___

Steve gets nightmares still. 

Bucky gets the feeling that would surprise people, except maybe Sam, who spent the better part of a year traveling all over the planet with him chasing Bucky. But this new Steve, this Steve in the new world they lived in now, he gave off the impression of being totally collected and put together, totally calm.

Maybe most of the time, he actually is . Maybe the only time all of the shit and horror Steve’s been through gets to come out is when he’s asleep. Maybe Steve just spent a lot of the past 4 years not sleeping much. He doesn’t really have too, his new body can run on 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night, even if it doesn’t do great things to his head when he does it for a long period of time. 

Here, in the jungle, there really isn’t much that needs their attention anyway. Steve has always been good at finding ways to distract himself from things he doesn’t want to deal with, and even here he manages. It’s a country like any other, with soldiers who need to be trained, and Steve is one of the best combat fighters in the world, and a good teacher on top of that. He works with T’Challa’s soldiers, training and learning in equal measure, while Bucky hangs back and reads, or listens to music, continues in the mission he set for himself to relearn how to be a person. If the trigger words are forever carved into his head, as they seem to be, the best he can try to do is bury them underneath people-things like books and music and friendships and warmth.

Wakanda is so warm. He doesn’t think he could dream up a place less like Siberia if he tried. 

But Steve spends a lot of his sudden abundance of free time and personal agency fighting, and Bucky wonders if he knows how to do anything else anymore. He remembers, distantly as though it happened to someone else, Sarah Rogers saying of young Steve that he didn’t fight _“for the sake of the fight. Yet, anyway. He’s always fighting for something.”_

Bucky wonders what Steve’s fighting for now, if he even knows himself. 

He will, at least, come do something with Bucky, if Bucky asks him to watch a movie or listen to music or just sit together. Their suite in T’Challa’s compound is utilitarian but comfortable, and they’ve been offered every opportunity to personalize it in anyway they can. Bucky had been given his own suite, at the start, in the block of little apartments that Clint had started calling “Runaway County,” where all the Avengers on the run from the Raft had been given accommodations.

But, after falling asleep on Steve’s couch for six straight nights in a row, Steve had just sighed, and tugged Bucky towards the bedroom. “I always liked sleeping next to you better anyway,” Steve had huffed, and from then it had been their suite. 

Steve isn’t sleeping now though.

Bucky wakes up to a dark room, and an empty bed, sheets cool enough to indicate the occupant has been gone for longer than a trip to the bathroom or to the kitchen for water. Frowning, Bucky sits up, propping his weight on his arm as he looks around. Usually he wakes up if Steve starts reacting to a nightmare, too hyperconscious himself to sleep through noises of distress or movement.

Which means whatever Steve was dreaming must have woken him up before he could start making too many visible signs of distress. Sighing, Bucky pushes the blankets off himself, grabbing a y-back off the floor to pull over his head and wriggle his arm into.

Steve is sitting at the table that serves as a dining table or desk in turn, bent over a stack of papers. Bucky’s about to groan and remind him that he doesn’t have to do paperwork anymore, that he doesn’t have to _work for anyone_ anymore, when the actual motion of Steve’s arm catches up to his groggy brain and he realizes Steve’s drawing.

It makes something squeeze in his heart. They’ve been here, together, for almost 6 months, and Bucky doesn’t think he’s seen Steve draw at all in that time.

“Hey,” he says softly in deference to the night, though he’s well aware Steve would have heard him approach. He’s capable of moving quietly enough that even Steve wouldn’t hear him, but he’s mostly worked out of it being habit by now.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve acknowledges, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his face with one hand, he looks tired. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” Bucky says absently, walking up behind Steve and looping his arm around his partner’s chest, so he can look down at the drawing Steve’s working on. The drawing is detailed enough to be proof that Steve hadn’t woken him, that he’d been out here for a while before his absence prompted Bucky’s subconscious to wake itself. 

Sarah looks up at them from the page, lovingly rendered and more pristine than she’d ever been in life, a single working mother of a sickly son. But this is how Steve remembers her. 

“It’s funny how dreams stick things together that don’t belong together,” Steve says dully, in a voice that indicates how he doesn’t find it funny at all. “I dreamt she died in the battle of New York.”

Bucky experiences an unpleasant jolt, a spike of horror on Steve’s behalf. He wasn’t active anywhere during that battle, as far as he can tell, from his own memories and from the Hydra database. But he’s read about the battle of New York, and Steve’s talked about it, a little. Mostly like this, in the liminal space that is night time. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, tightening his arm a little so Steve will lean back against him.

“Pointless thing to dream about,” Steve says bitterly. “She’s been dead for so long. Even in... relative time or whatever, time to me, she’s been dead for almost 10 years. But there I was, back fighting on that day, and I knew she was in the dinner, and I knew I had to get to her, and I saw her, and I watched her get shot–” 

He cuts himself off abruptly, and Bucky can hear him swallow wetly. “She’s still your Ma,” Bucky says gently, and Steve sags back against him, finally.

“Yeah,” he agrees, “she is.” 

They lapse into silence, both of them left staring down at the drawing of Sarah Rogers. Nothing about the lack of practice in the last few years has lessened Steve’s skill, still fantastically talented even with the ballpoint pen that he’d been using. 

“Maybe you should draw more,” Bucky suggests. He may be brain-damaged, he thinks dryly to himself, but even he can see how important an outlet this could be for Steve. “I’m sure people make art here, someone could get you nice pencils and fancy paper and shit if you asked.”

“I can’t ask for–”

“What? Getting you some pencils isn’t going to inconvenience anyone Steve, you’re not asking for a jet to jump out of,” Bucky points out, and doesn’t have to be able to see Steve’s face to imagine the pained expression he’s making. “You’re allowed to want things,” Bucky says quietly, which is a mantra he’s spent the past 2 years trying to work into his own brian. It’s kind of working. 

Bucky, at least, has accepted his own mission of relearning to be a person. It’s slow-going, but it’s something he’s trying to do. He’s not sure Steve’s quite there yet, willing to admit that he’s got work to do, if not admittedly as much as Bucky does.

But that’s fine. It gives Bucky time to catch up to him, and then maybe they can move forward together. He can wait for Steve to be ready, and do his own work on his own personal mission in the meantime. Until the next potentially world-ending event comes, and come it will, they’ve got time. 

“Come back to bed?” Bucky asks, because Steve will usually do things if Bucky asks, and just because they can both function with the amount of sleep they’ve had, doesn’t mean they should. Steve just nods and lets himself be lead back to the bedroom. 

“She used to sing to us,” Bucky says quietly, as they settle back into bed, Steve on his right side where he belongs. “I remember that.”

“Yeah, she did,” Steve agrees, rolling into Bucky’s side so he can wrap his arm around Steve’s shoulders, Steve curling his own around Bucky’s waist, cheek resting on his chest. “Used to put me to sleep singing when I was little, or when I was sick.”

“Me too,” Bucky agrees, swallowing a little painfully. “Whenever I was upset and ran away to yours.”

“You remember the song you sang at her funeral?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says hoarsely, and he knows what Steve’s going to ask before he even starts.

“Will you sing it for me?”

Bucky swallows, and swallows, and tries to find his voice. “I’ll try. Don’t know how good I’m going to be.”

“Don’t care,” Steve says stubbornly, tugging himself even closer to Bucky, settling in. 

Bucky takes a deep breath, and opens his mouth to sing. 

_Of all the money that e'er I had, I spent it in good company_  
_And of all the harm that e'er I've done, alas it was to none but me_  
_And all I've done for want of wit, to memory now I can't recall_  
_So fill to me the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be to you all_

_Of all the comrades that e'er I had, they're sorry for my going away_  
_And all the sweethearts that e'er I had_  
_They would wish me one more day to stay_  
_But since it fell unto my lot that I should rise and you should not_  
_I'll gently rise and I'll softly call, "Goodnight and joy be to you all!"_

_Goodnight and joy be to you all_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks a bunch to [girl3wonder](http://girl3wonder.tumblr.com/) for boss-ass beta reading. This originally started out being a birthday fic for her, but it was WAY TOO ANGSTY and also I ended up writing another fic that had tropes which were more her speed. If you want to find me on tumblr, I'm [portraitofemmy](http://portraitofemmy.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


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